09 February 2015

The display of militarism at the hockey game the other night was disgusting. When did hockey games become the proper forum to honour war dead?

I have a theory, inspired by a random tweet I saw, that the Cons are trying to make hockey a conservative thing in the same way that the GOP has made Nascar a Republican thing. It's kind of fucking brilliant, actually, in a sick Machiavellian sort of way.

1) They own Sportsnet. That is, Rogers does. And Rogers is terribly conservative. They can get any shit they want on the air before a game. Games are watched by more Canadians than anything else. This allows them to sell their message, and to do it for cheap.
2) Canada is hockey. In a lot of ways, hockey is a big part of our national identity. If they can fuse conservatism with Hockey, they'll win forever. Think about it. Merge nationalism into hockey (it's already chock full of patriotic bullshit), and make the war effort part of the hockey culture. They've already got Don Fucking Cherry and his shit. For reasons I cannot begin to imagine, Canadians find that guy charming. He's a bridge troll. Somehow they think he's smart. It's bloody bizarre. As a sideshow, I don't mind him. But he's become the show, and his military bootlicking is becoming part of the game. It's scary.

I don't want to be the US. Why are they hellbent on making us like the US? If people wanted that, they'd go there, no?

06 February 2015

There's a song that's been going through my head for the last week or so, and one of the stuck lines is "I just don't want it...enough I guess". I don't know what he doesn't want, and I'm terrible at analyzing poetry or lyrics. Like embarrassingly bad. Then last night I caught an episode of Mysteries of Laura (AWESOME SHOW, btw) and the Laura was seriously tempted by the kisses of her ex-husband. God is laughing at me. I'm gonna get all philosophical and shit, so move on if that's not your kinda post. :)

I'm counselling someone right now. I'll call her Donna. She's going through some hard times, and she's a devout Christian, but not the kind I am. Her God and my God are vastly different in their ways. So I'm having trouble on that end of the discussions. Donna's beating herself up about a decision she almost made wrong. Does that make sense? She was in a situation where she was tempted to do something, and she decided not to, even though a good part of her really wanted to. She's beating herself up about this. She's decided that even wanting to sin is a sin.

Sin, by her definition is anything God doesn't approve of, and she gets to decide what God approves of based on her interpretation of scriptures and the things her pastors say. My definition of sin is doing something that violates your own moral code. That is, knowing in your heart that what you're doing is wrong and doing it anyway. In a way, our definitions are the same, since we're both deciding what is right and what is wrong based on our understanding of the world. The consequences for sin is where we differ massively. But that's another essay.

Donna feels like even wanting to do something she knows is wrong is a sin. We talked about how you can't do anything you don't want to do. You can't. Truly. If you're doing something, you want to do it more than you don't. Suppose my husband invites his family to stay with us, in our house, for 2 weeks. I don't want to spend more than a few hours at a time with them for various reasons, but I don't go find a hotel, I don't lock myself in my room for the whole time, or go to a friends. I suck it up and make nice. Because I want to. Because I want to more than I want to hide. Because the consequences of hiding are worse than the consequences of staying. So I do it. I want to do it more than I don't.

Even if that thing you don't want to do is being coerced from you, you want to do it more than you want to face the consequences. If you're being abused, and you want to leave, but can't because he'll kill your dog (I've heard that fucking story too many times. Fuck abusers!) you're staying because you want to more than you want to risk your dog. That's OK. That's more than OK. That's a perfectly valid reason to choose what you're choosing. Not that you need my validation, but I know sometimes, it's nice anyway. But I digress. The point is that you cannot do something you don't want to do at least a little more than you don't want to do it. Whoo. Convoluted. Let's try this" At least 50.1% of you has to want to do the action more than not wanting to, or you wouldn't be doing it.

Well, that backfired. She says that means that 49% of her is sinful. That she "sinned in her heart". Gah. Temptation isn't sin. If we weren't tempted to do the wrong thing the odd time, we'd never ever figure out what is right and wrong. And furthermore, I told her to remember when Jesus was in the desert and Satan tempted him. He wasn't sinning. She said that he wasn't truly tempted. He never seriously considered it. And furthermore, it wasn't Satan tempting her, it was herself, a horrible sinful side of her that just wanted to run free and fuck the consequences.

And that's where I almost started to cry.

Fundamentalism and literalism have so seriously warped the message that even the most basic stories fail to teach in any useful way. On one hand, good for her for taking responsibility for her wants, for not blaming it on Satan*, for not going with The Devil Made Me Do It. On the other hand, if she could see that Jesus's temptation was exactly the same, that it wasn't a literal incarnation of evil suggesting to Jesus that he didn't have to take the hard route, God's way, the Light Side, whatever you want to call it, she could maybe forgive herself for considering what she considered.

Part of Donna's problem is fear. She's afraid that if the situation arises again, she may not choose the right thing, that the part of her she wants to quash will be stronger than the part of her that she wants to be. She's not sure she can resist that temptation again. (She can. She wasn't even close. But she doesn't know that. Donna, I swear. You weren't close.) Fantasy isn't sin. Fantasy you consider acting on, isn't sin. Fantasy you set up and almost act on, isn't sin. You don't have to feel bad about that. And that's what she's doing. She's feeling guilty about something she didn't do so that she can remind herself not to do it in the future.

We don't even have to feel bad about shitty things we did. *wince* Controversial? Probably. There are a lot of people who think that if you don't feel bad, that means you'll do it again, or that you think it was okay to do that. Whatever that was. Suppose I screamed "fuck off!" at a child. Not cool, right? Of course. Do I have to feel bad in order to know that? No. I can look at that behaviour, decide it wasn't right, and wasn't who I want to be, and not do it again. I don't have to use unhappiness to prevent myself from doing it again. I don't have to remember how bad I felt in order to drive myself into not doing it again. No one needs to. We do, myself included sometimes, because it works, but we don't have to. There are other ways.

Sometimes I wonder if some people who beat themselves up about a bad decision aren't trying to pre-punish themselves so God doesn't have to. Or if they think that God is punishing them by making them feel bad.

The world is a hard enough place to navigate without punishing ourselves for sins we didn't commit, but kinda wanted to.

*I don't believe in Satan, but she does. For me, Satan is a useful metaphor for our own desire to give into things that aren't right.

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About Me

I'm a loud, opinionated, stay-at-home Mom of three awesome minions - Snap, Crackle and Pop. I've got entirely too much education, complete with entirely too much debt. I'm open-minded to a fault - my husband says my open-mindedness is bound to get me in trouble. I'm a feminist, a Christian, a socialist, though not necessarily in that order.

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